


for hearts fierce and free

by dancingwiththewind (highfaenyx)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, character study of a kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 05:33:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18337196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfaenyx/pseuds/dancingwiththewind
Summary: she rips the shirt open, baring her chest - she doesn’t wear a bra; no corset binding her breath, no chains over her ribcage - ever since Jack freed her underwater that day which seems like an eternity ago.





	for hearts fierce and free

Elizabeth looks at Jack and Davy Jones, fighting on the deck of a ship cursed long ago, amidst the greatest storm she’s ever seen; _he’s going to lose,_ she knows - with this calm and grim knowledge building inside her. She also knows, that as soon as Jack’s chest will be pierced, Will will step in to take his place.

 

_I don’t want them to die_ , she thinks.

She remembers three of them, strangers - in the past, and a family of sorts - in the future; the future she had dared to dream about just before this battle started. Hope is the last resort for all; even for the almighty Pirate King. And the Pirate King can be selfish, for she is a pirate, and cares for those she loves the most in the world, she thinks, and finds a strange courage in these words.

She is awoken by a clasping sound of wood clashing with wood, and sees the chest falling right in front of her with Davy Jones’ heart tumbling out.

Elizabeth glances at it. One moment, then another; she already sees the captain making a leap for it. _Jack won’t reach it in time,_ she realises, surprising herself with the clarity of the thought.

_He’ll stab Jack, murder Will, kill my crew. Maybe keep me alive, for the very end._

Elizabeth can be as well as dead if the family and freedom she had chosen herself dies. _But if…_

_I die, here and now, my heart will belong to me no more_ , and so she closes her eyes and savours the steady beat inside her, for only a moment more, and the winds dry tears on her face.

_It was enough_ , Elizabeth thinks. She has loved, and was loved - by her father and her mother; by her crew and her captains, by Gibbs and Barbossa, and many those she inspired and protected, and had been a Pirate King to; by Will and Jack, her white and black knights in raggedy pirate armour; by cities, oceans and skies of this vast infinite world. _It was enough for a couple of good lifetimes_ , she smiles to herself.

She rips the shirt open, baring her chest - she doesn’t wear a bra; no corset binding her breath, no chains over her ribcage - ever since Jack freed her underwater that day which seems like an eternity ago.

And then - then she holds her breath and cuts out her heart, beating and alive, and drops it in the wooden chest, and shuts the lock.

There is no blood, but Davy Jones falls, his heart turned to ash at her feet; his spear in mere inches from Jack’s throat, and he is left gasping, clutching the railing of the ship. The sound of metal hitting the wooden decks is like a thunder in the night, somehow louder than the sound of the storm building around them - or maybe it is just her, she thinks, the world moving in slow motion, thoughts pacing fast through her head.

Jack is clearly in shock, Elizabeth thinks; he looks at Will first, but Will is looking at her, and soon they both do. Gibbs is shouting something behind her back, Barbossa is laughing on the deck of the ship next to them, but for her the world shrinks down to her uneven breath - in and out, in and out, sea smell in her lungs; and to Will’s and Jack’s eyes, locked shut on her.

She braces herself for the impact; she expects pain and emptiness, but nothing changes.

Elizabeth still feels the beating of her heart, not in the chest, but _inside._ The breeze still caresses her cheeks and plays with her ripped shirt, baring her stomach, and she shrugs it off. She feels more: the ship underneath her, the waves hitting it, the direction in the ocean they want her to go to; she feels every soul dying in the waters, and gives them her blessing, not sadness, never sadness -and for every soul born in the waters, too.

She still loves - the ships, their crews, the piracy they live; Jack and Will and all seas and oceans they can roam together. She is no dead, she realises.

If anything, she feels even more alive than ever. More free. More daring.

For a moment Elizabeth _is_ the seas, the oceans that made her a true pirate, and she laughs, loud and happy, and looks at the rest of her world - at Will and Jack.

They are already by her side, and she is still smiling when she intertwines her hands with theirs, and they are smiling, too.

 

She knows that this moment will most probably slip from them in a heartbeat; perhaps the very next second she will feel the weight of the world she has taken on - but , together, they will deal with consequences, she believes. Maybe naively and blunt - yet hasn’t she always been this way, she asks herself, _and that way has lead me here_.

 

For here and now, heartless captain Elizabeth Swann feels infinite.

**Author's Note:**

> The Pirate King would make a fine Flying Dutchman captain, wouldn't she?   
> Freedom, the wind playing with her unruly hair and all the seas and oceans in world.  
> She would have loved it, I think.


End file.
